There's nothing better than receiving a gift. What's even better is when you find out the giver made it by hand just for you. All of a sudden, the gift becomes ten times more special and will always hold a place in your heart. Whether it's baked goods or a set of stationery, homemade gifts are the way to go and with the spring season rolling around, there's no time like the present to make something to show someone how much you care.

Luckily for you, my Design Team and I are here on the blog all week to share our favorite homemade gift ideas that you can recreate for yourself. I'm the first one on the schedule for this week and I'm sharing some DIY Hand Soap Bars and a cute gift tag using my spring release.

To make the soap I used this and this tutorial that I found on Pinterest. I mixed and matched some of the products and they turned out just fine. In fact, I would say that the process is even easier then the tutorial explains...it took be about 3-5 minutes to make each scent. That's my kind of DIY.

Once my soaps were cooled and popped out of the mold I moved on to my favorite part: packaging. I started my making my own printable tags that read "homemade hand soap" and printed them out. You can download them for yourself here. Next, I used a tag die-cut to trim out the phrase and set out to decorate them with various stamps.

I used my Hoppy Easter set for the cute little bunny and my Grass background stamp to create the texture on the hill. I punched a hole in the top of the tag and I was ready for my gift bag. To add even more texture and detail to my gift, I sprinkled in some kraft paper crinkle in to a cellophane bag and slid in my soaps. I tied it up with the tag and some matching twine and my homemade gift was finished!

I made a couple of these to give to work friends and they were more than excited to receive them. Not only were they touched by this unexpected gift, but they were amazed that I had made them myself. Little did they know how easy they were to make...we'll keep that a secret between us crafty friends.

If you are interested in making some of these for yourself, make sure to read this and this tutorial in more detail. And if you want to pick up the items I used for the tags, you can see them here.